Following pandemic-related delays, the 10th installment (including spinoff Hobbs & Shaw) in the Fast and Furious Saga arrives 20 years and three days after the inaugural film, The Fast and the Furious. The Toretto extended family story has come a long way in the last couple of decades, from obvious Point Break ripoff to ushering tuner culture into the mainstream to a 10-part franchise with two billion-grossing movies under its belt.
While F9 picks up where the last mainline movie, The Fate of the Furious, left off, it also serves as main character Dominic Torreto's origin story via numerous flashbacks. As spoiled by the poster and the trailers, F9 introduces us to Dom's long-lost evil brother, Jakob, portrayed by yet another WWE alum (after Dwayne "the Rock" Johnson and Ronda Rousey), John Cena. We also finally see events referenced in the first movie; namely, Dom's father dying during a stockcar race and his son enacting the vengeance that lands him in Lompoc, effectively kicking off his criminal career. Most of the gang returns, including some surprising members, and, thanks again to trailer spoilers, one not-so-surprising member in the form of Han Lue. For those unfamiliar with the overarching story, Han was killed (or so it appeared) in a car explosion in the third film in the series, Tokyo Drift, way back in 2006. Anyway, just like in the 6th, 7th and 8th entries, the team is tasked with preventing a super-powerful tech device from falling into the wrong hands and their mission leads to various points across the globe -- with car-related hijinks along the way.
As if things hadn't already been outrageous, it's really getting stupid now, what with the long-lost brother soap opera shenanigans and the second return of a dead character -- so far. In case you missed it, Dom's longtime girlfriend, Letty, was killed (seemingly) in an explosion in Fast & Furious back in 2009. She was revealed to have survived, afflicted with AMNESIA (!) and working with an international crime ring in Fast & Furious 6 (2013). I promise I'm not making this stuff up. Maybe Brixton Lore and Johnny Tran'll be resurrected in the next movie. Our own John Zenoni can't get over the fact that Furious 7 featured a car jumping from one skyscraper to another and if you feel the same way, you really won't be able to handle the Tom Cruise-defying stunts in this one. The days when a character jumping from one moving vehicle to another actually seemed like he was in danger are long gone.
The plausibility of street racers being assigned impossible missions by the CIA aside, my biggest issue with this saga is the ongoing tendency for the white villains to survive (like Cipher) , and in some cases, to even be given (unearned) redemption, complete with a spot on the team (Owen Shaw and Deckard Shaw). Meanwhile, most of the minority antagonists are either sentenced to a million years in prison (Arturo Braga) or killed off and never given a second thought (Mose Jakande, Kiet, D.K., Hernan Reyes, Fenix Calderon and the aforementioned Brixton Lore and Johnny Tran). That's a pretty foul track record for a series that's frequently praised for its ethnic diversity.
Anyway, F9 is pretty much guaranteed to become the highest-grossing movie of the year when it hits western theaters (it's already debuted in China, Russia and South Korea to the tune of $244 million) -- at least until the MCU returns to multiplexes. Never mind #JusticeforHan, skip this movie and the entire franchise unless and until the filmmakers provide justice for the minority antagonists.
Coming to a theater near you on June 25.
No comments:
Post a Comment